✦ Nobel Laureates ✦
India & the Nobel Prize
A Century of Excellence · 1913 – 2019
Timeline of Wins
1913
Tagore
1930
CV Raman
1968
Khorana
1979
M. Teresa
1983
Chandrasekhar
1998
A. Sen
2001
Naipaul
2009
Ramakrishnan
2014
Satyarthi
2019
Banerjee
All Laureates — Detailed Profiles
1913
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941)
Literature
"For his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the Western literature." — Nobel Committee
The first Indian and first non-European to win a Nobel Prize. Tagore was a Bengali polymath — poet, playwright, novelist, painter, philosopher and composer. His collection Gitanjali (Song Offerings), translated into English with deeply spiritual prose-poetry, captivated the Western world. He wrote India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana and composed Bangladesh's national anthem. He founded Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan in 1921. Knighted in 1915, he later renounced his knighthood in 1919 to protest the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
📍 Born: Calcutta, Bengal
🏛️ Indian Citizen at time of award
📚 Notable Work: Gitanjali (1910)
1930
Sir C.V. Raman (1888–1970)
Physics
"For his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him." — Nobel Committee
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was a Tamil Nadu-born physicist who discovered the Raman Effect — the inelastic scattering of photons when light passes through a transparent medium, revealing the molecular composition of substances. He made this discovery on February 28, 1928, a date now celebrated as National Science Day in India. He was the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in science, and accomplished this using equipment costing only a few hundred rupees. He founded the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore and was awarded India's first Bharat Ratna in 1954.
📍 Born: Thiruvanaikaval, Tamil Nadu
🏛️ Indian Citizen at time of award
📅 Discovery: Feb 28, 1928
1968
Har Gobind Khorana (1922–2011) Indian-American
Physiology / Medicine
"For their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis." — Nobel Committee (shared with Marshall Nirenberg & Robert Holley)
Born in Raipur, in what was then British India (present-day Pakistan), Khorana emigrated to the United States and became a professor at MIT. He made groundbreaking contributions to understanding how DNA sequences are translated into proteins — the genetic code. His work on synthesizing nucleic acids and demonstrating codon-amino acid relationships was foundational to modern molecular biology and biotechnology. He later became the first to chemically synthesize an entire gene in 1972.
📍 Born: Raipur, British India (now Pakistan)
🏛️ American citizen at time of award
🔬 MIT Professor
1979
Mother Teresa (1910–1997) Indian Resident
Peace
"For work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace." — Nobel Committee
Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje (present-day North Macedonia), she came to India in 1929 and spent the rest of her life serving the poor of Calcutta. In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, which grew into a global organisation with over 4,500 sisters operating in 133 countries. She opened homes for the dying, orphanages, and leprosy clinics across India. She became an Indian citizen in 1950 and was canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis in 2016. She is the only woman on the list of Indian Nobel laureates.
📍 Born: Skopje, North Macedonia
🏛️ Indian citizen at time of award
🕊️ Canonised: 2016
1983
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) Indian-American
Physics
"For his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars." — Nobel Committee (shared with William Fowler)
Born in Lahore (undivided India), Chandrasekhar was a nephew of C.V. Raman. His landmark work involved calculating the Chandrasekhar Limit — the maximum mass (~1.4 solar masses) of a stable white dwarf star, beyond which it collapses into a neutron star or black hole. He made this discovery at age 19 while sailing from India to England. NASA named its premier X-ray space observatory the Chandra X-ray Observatory in his honour in 1999. He spent most of his career at the University of Chicago.
📍 Born: Lahore, British India
🏛️ American citizen at time of award
🔭 Chandra X-ray Observatory named after him
1998
Amartya Sen (b. 1933)
Economics
"For his contributions to welfare economics." — Nobel Committee
Born in Santiniketan, West Bengal, Sen is one of the world's most influential economists and philosophers. His work revolutionised welfare economics, social choice theory, and development economics. He demonstrated that famines are not caused by food shortages alone but by failures in distribution and entitlement — a finding with huge policy implications. His Human Development Index (co-developed with Mahbub ul Haq) is now used by the United Nations. His books Development as Freedom and The Argumentative Indian are widely read globally. He has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard.
📍 Born: Santiniketan, West Bengal
🏛️ Indian citizen
📚 Notable: Development as Freedom (1999)
2001
V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Indian-Origin
Literature
"For having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." — Nobel Committee
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in Trinidad to an Indian family of Brahmin descent whose ancestors had emigrated from Uttar Pradesh as indentured labourers. He later settled in England. His works explore post-colonial identity, displacement, and the legacies of the British Empire. Notable works include A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), In a Free State (1971, Booker Prize), and A Bend in the River (1979). He is often included in lists of Indian Nobel Prize winners due to his Indian ancestry and his extensive writing about India including An Area of Darkness.
📍 Born: Chaguanas, Trinidad
🏛️ British citizen (Indian ancestry)
📚 Notable: A House for Mr. Biswas (1961)
2009
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (b. 1952) Indian-British-American
Chemistry
"For studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." — Nobel Committee (shared with Thomas Steitz & Ada Yonath)
Born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, "Venki" Ramakrishnan used X-ray crystallography to map the atomic structure of the ribosome — the cellular machine that translates genetic information into proteins. This research has had enormous implications for the development of antibiotics, as many target ribosomal function in bacteria. He worked at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. He was elected President of the Royal Society (2015–2020) and was awarded a Knighthood in 2012. He wrote Gene Machine (2018) about his Nobel journey.
📍 Born: Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu
🏛️ British-American citizen
🔬 MRC Lab, Cambridge
2014
Kailash Satyarthi (b. 1954)
Peace
"For their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education." — Nobel Committee (shared with Malala Yousafzai)
Born Kailash Sharma in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, he gave up a career in electrical engineering to dedicate his life to ending child labour. He founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) in 1980, which has rescued over 90,000 children from exploitation and slavery. He spearheaded the Global March Against Child Labour in 1998, which influenced the ILO Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of child labour. He remains a vocal global advocate for children's education, safety and freedom from exploitation.
📍 Born: Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh
🏛️ Indian citizen
👶 Rescued 90,000+ children
2019
Abhijit Banerjee (b. 1961) Indian-American
Economics
"For their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." — Nobel Committee (shared with Esther Duflo & Michael Kremer)
Born in Mumbai and raised in Kolkata, Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. He pioneered the use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) — the same methodology used in clinical drug trials — to test development interventions like microfinance, schooling programmes, and health incentives in poor communities across Africa and Asia. He co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT in 2003, which has influenced policies benefiting hundreds of millions. He is married to co-laureate Esther Duflo.
📍 Born: Mumbai; raised in Kolkata
🏛️ American citizen (Indian-born)
🎓 MIT Professor & J-PAL co-founder
⚠️ Disclaimer
This page is compiled for educational and informational purposes only. All Nobel Prize citations, laureate biographies, and institutional details are sourced from publicly available information including the official Nobel Prize website (nobelprize.org) and Wikipedia. This page is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to the Nobel Foundation, Anthropic, or any government body.
The classification of "Indian" Nobel laureates follows the widely used convention that includes (a) Indian citizens at time of award, (b) Indian residents at time of award, and (c) individuals of Indian birth or ancestry — as reflected on Wikipedia's List of Indian Nobel laureates. V.S. Naipaul's inclusion is based solely on his Indian ancestry; he was a British citizen born in Trinidad. No new Indian Nobel laureates have been announced between 2020 and 2025.
External links open in a new tab. We do not control the content of external websites. Information is accurate to the best of our knowledge as of April 2026.
The classification of "Indian" Nobel laureates follows the widely used convention that includes (a) Indian citizens at time of award, (b) Indian residents at time of award, and (c) individuals of Indian birth or ancestry — as reflected on Wikipedia's List of Indian Nobel laureates. V.S. Naipaul's inclusion is based solely on his Indian ancestry; he was a British citizen born in Trinidad. No new Indian Nobel laureates have been announced between 2020 and 2025.
External links open in a new tab. We do not control the content of external websites. Information is accurate to the best of our knowledge as of April 2026.
